Thursday, 23 November 2017

Gdes2014 Client Feedback

We've fed back some of your additional Q's on the brief raised to clients Hannah and Rachel at the National Archives and have popped some of their key replies down below:---------------------------------------------Hello Andy and Lynda,

Thanks for the email. Glad (the students) are still really excited about the project and sounds like there has been lots of productive working going on.Rachel and I discussed the points you raised:

1. We said that it is absolutely fine for them to re-use the same A, B and C questions for different spreads/pages. For each document it would be great for them to have an A, B and C question. For the B category particularly there are a range of questions they could ask, so that is up to them.2. For the C question I think an activity would work well. This could be around the idea of usefulness for a particular topic/question. So they could put an arrow on a scale of usefulness for instance. Or another document students might want to look at. Or I like the idea of a more creative activity like you mentioned (drawing etc.)3. With the lead in text I think they could include some description. However this should be limited because students are developing their inference skills with this resource. *I think this links to the query about whether students need to provide the answers to the questions. We don’t think this is necessary because it is something we can add in later if needed.There shouldn’t be many right or wrong answers in a way because the aim is for students to make educated guesses using details from the documents.4. In response to other queries, I think it would be good for there to be space for pupils to write their answers. That allows more flexibility in terms of where the resource can be used. Either onsite where the box would be necessary, or in the classroom where it is less needed.Indeed, you might want to provide different sized boxes which guide how much you will be expecting from the students. Equally if there is a creative outcome in the C part then they will have to think about the layout for that. 5. I think the size of the reproduction is fine. If it is an issue we can adapt for different documents and provide a larger version separately.I don’t think a link to the image is necessary. But students should be putting the document reference code (if any issues with that let us know.)6. (snipped)7. Also, I will send another email with some great images of Victorian Hard Labour. This was when prisoners were forced to do pointless activities for 8 hours a day, 10 minutes on, 10 minutes off.One example in the images is the crank which a prisoner turned in their cell (it didn’t do anything just turned a paddle in some sand). The other is an image of a tread wheel. There is also a whipping post included. One of the most fascinating thing about that image is the fact that there are lower buckles for hands. Students can infer that smaller people i.e children were punished in similar ways in Victorian prisons. If you want any more images I can send them over.

Hope that is helpful. Please let us know if there are parts you want clarifying.